Get ready to welcome a new local brewery to the Northwest Florida craft beer scene. Idyll Hounds Brewery has been anything but idle as they've been busy putting together their brewery in Santa Rosa Beach. All that work is coming to fruition as they are ready to distribute their brews to the local area now.

Building the beautiful new brewery (image courtesy of Idyll Hounds)

Frasier Hansen was kind enough to answer some of our initial questions when we first found out about Idyll Hounds late last year, to include the "origin story" behind Idyll Hounds:

"This project was born when Frasier Hansen met Shawn Sherman. Frasier came to work under long time Chef Shawn at a small restaurant cooking local favorites. After many hot nights sweating in the kitchen followed by craft beers, Frasier and Shawn set out to open their very own brewery. With Frasier’s passion and knowledge for brewing craft beer coupled with Shawn’s extensive culinary experience and restaurant expertise these two entrepreneurs set out on their journey. 12 months later a brewery was born"

He also explained how they decided on the unique and memorable name for the brewery:

"We like the different usages of the word. We thought it was playful, fun, and had many different directions we could go with. Rustic, Pastoral… Punny. Yes of course we love dogs! Michael Hansen my Father and our investor is the "Hound". He has carried this nickname since he was a young boy. Everyone knows him as the "Hound" and as the years went on I became known as "the pup". As a way to pay homage to "The Hound" for helping our dream come to a reality we decided to use this name. The word Idyll was brought up in a brainstorming session and seemed to stick. We loved how the name rolled off the tongue and we figured that it would be a great name to play with in the future."

As for the beer lineup, Idyll Hounds is starting off with two "regular" offerings with plans to release seasonal and special offerings in the future. The initial two brews being released are:

Divide & Conch'r: Double IPA (ABV 8% IBU's 100)

Divide & Conch'r Cans (image courtesy of Idyll Hounds)

Man o' Wheat: Unfiltered Wheat Beer (ABV 4.8% IBU's 30)

MAN O' WHEAT CANS (IMAGE COURTESY OF IDYLL HOUNDS)

They will be distributing their beers in cans and kegs. When we first talked to Idyll Hounds, the plan was to initially distribute between Destin and Panama City Beach. So we were happily surprised when Idyll Hounds recently posted on Facebook:

Let it be know that on this day the 16th day of November we the Idyll Hounds put some delicious Divide & Conch'r into kegs and prepared it for official delivery to the unsuspecting beer lovers of South Walton!

In the comments to that post, they stated that Divide & Conch'r will be available in ten locations in Panama City Beach, Ft Walton Beach, and Pensacola.

You should be able to get your hands on some Idyll Hounds in the Pensacola area any day now. We will keep you posted as we hear more and especially when we find out the Pensacola locations where you can find them. Check out Idyll Hounds on their website and you can follow them both on Facebook and Twitter.